Ghosts of the Past
by AngelCeleste85
Summary: How and why did Erik build the Opera Garnier, a palace in the middle of Paris, and why is it called that? The Phantom of the Opera himself explains here.


Ghosts of the Past By AngelCeleste85  
  
Disclaimer: I don't own PTO, I'm just borrowing the characters because it's fun to play with them. I promise I'll return them, but I can't make any promises as to their condition or mental status, sorry. Also not going to say *when* I'll return them! I am also not responsible for any hysterical tears (that's your fault), maniacal Phantom-esque laughter (Phantom-asque? Never mind, I'm playing with words again.) or mental damage resulting from any of my work (though I'll accept the inherent compliments from such reviews gladly)!  
  
Other notes: Written entirely from Erik's point of view and working heavily with the Leroux novel. This is a way of writing that I have not tried working with before, I hope you enjoy it. I would use italics if I could, but I can't get Fanfiction.net to accept HTML documents from my computer.  
  
[[ The scene. ]]  
  
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Ghosts of the Past by AngelCeleste85  
  
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[[ You stand on a gray stone doorstep before a large, heavy wooden door with a polished brass knocker. You are surprised, the door is excellent condition for being subjected to mold and damp for over a century. Behind you is a cavern, dark and misty, with a little dock stretching a few feet into a lake as black as ink. Beside the dock is a small boat, long and narrow, designed like the gondolas of the Venetian canals. Your hands are sore from poling the boat across, but it is tied safely for your return trip. ]]  
  
[[ You turn back to the door and raise the knocker three times. The sound seems to echo unnaturally in the stillness of the cave. Almost immediately, a strong male voice resounds from within. ]]  
  
Enter!  
  
[[ You turn the latch and enter, not sure of what to expect. ]]  
  
[[ You find yourself standing in a small but elegant room furnished in the Louis-Philippe style of 1840's France. The walls are paneled in a rich dark wood that bears a sheen of polish to it. A walnut whatnot in the corner holds knickknacks of all kinds. In another corner sits a massive black throne. A fireplace crackles merrily, before which two armchairs have been drawn up with a small table placed between. On the table sits a finely-wrought silver service with two goblets and a dark red wine already decanted. ]]  
  
[[ But the furnishings do not hold nearly as much interest as the man in the armchair facing you. He looks up and lays aside his book, you note idly that the title was "The Hunchback of Notre Dame." The man rises gracefully from his seat, but makes no move to help you with your cloak. He wears expensive-looking but tasteful Victorian formal evening wear and a white mask over one side of his face. His eyes are dark, but carry an amber glint to them and the visible corner of his mouth is faintly curved up. The exposed side of his face is so pale as to be nearly translucent except for the glow of health in his cheek, and the white mask on the other side lends a slightly more formal and elegant air to this man. ]]  
  
Ah, there you are. I have been expecting you, you understand, and I do not like to be kept waiting. If you did not notice, you may leave your cloak on the hat-tree behind the door.  
  
Now, if you would care to take a seat? I trust that my humble home is not too humble for you. I will not say to make yourself at home, I am not used to dealing with people in my own home and am rather jealous of my personal space. Pardon me for being rather out of practice as a host. You understand, of course.  
  
[[ He resumes his seat where he can watch the door. You seat yourself in the other chair, facing the man. Erik pours you each a glass of wine and sips once in a while as he unfolds his story. ]]  
  
I shall not bore you with trivialities. You know me as Erik, though most would be more familiar with me as the Phantom of the Opera, or the Opera Ghost, or some such variation. It is of no consequence, certainly, what you call me. Nor shall I bore you with the story of myself and Christine, you and I both know it has been told so many times in so may ways that my own words would be only another voice in the clamor, scarcely even registering.  
  
No, I understand that you came here to learn something of the history to the building these Parisians call the Garnier Palace from one of the builders. You made a good choice in coming to me. After all, it is rather ironic that this marvelous building is known internationally by the name of a man who never had anything to do with this place!  
  
Oh, did you not know? Then I shall start from the beginning, but I will tell you some things that I never told Leroux. But it is important to know something of my motivations, so I will start with the court of the Shah of Persia.  
  
If you are familiar with my story, you know that I left the service of the Shah in haste after building a palace for him, a palace like none other ever built. The ungrateful wretch had the nerve to order my death for that: I can only guess that he feared I would build another palace for another ruler that would surpass his own. He was, of course, absolutely correct in that respect. For by that time he had learned something of craftsmen, which I am. Even as a musician I am a craftsman, and a true master of his craft strives always to improve his skills: I would not have built another edifice equally as magnificent, but more so, for another! My old friend the Daroga told me that the Shah laughed at the shock of the court and said that he was doing me a favor, in allowing me to die without shame of failure  
  
The order for my execution chanced to fall upon the shoulders of the Daroga of Mazanderan to carry out, do you know him? No? Ah, just as well, two consciences would be enough to drive any man insane. The man has been both my blessing and my curse through the years, a friend when I needed and my self-appointed conscience when I cared for it the least. As you may know, this was the same man who fetched me from Novgorod in the middle of the Russian winter to the Shah's service to begin with.  
  
Why he should have bothered to thwart his ruler, who was a distant cousin as near as I could ever tell, I will never know, but the Daroga obviously did not fulfill the order. He spirited me away from Tehran instead and hid me in the ruins of Babylon while the furor died down. It was the one place he knew the locals were too superstitious to go anywhere near and far enough from the capital to be certain that no chance patrol would come across me. Certainly in his choice was the factor that the ancient ruins now are very much isolated from people, I have no doubts that he was trying to imprison me in his own way.  
  
Traveling by night when it was safe to do so, we got as far as Damascus. We were separated there and I made my way to Constantinople without hearing from my comrade-nemesis again. My name was known to the Sultan from my time in Persia and he expressed his gratitude to me personally that I had been able to escape from his Eastern rival. For him also I built marvels, and from him also I found that I had to flee for knowing too much.  
  
[[ Erik pauses and sips his wine before continuing. ]]  
  
This, then, is where the story of the Opera House truly begins. My Opera House, I should say. I certainly had the credentials to do it, but as much a part in my motivations was a desire to insult both rulers. After all, must I sacrifice even my life to construct marvels for them alone? I should say not!  
  
I arrived in Venice with the clothes on my back, the skills in my head, the talents in my hands, and my violin. Nothing more, and fortunate not to arrive with less. It was from Venice that I learned the waterman's skill and the art of handling a gondola, for they are narrow and unwieldy craft at best.  
  
Eventually I once again began designing buildings, but these were nothing special. I had tired by now of the whimsical creations I had built and nearly paid for with my life twice and twice in my stay in Constantinople the Shah's assassins had come after me. Evidently he had been fooled for a little while, but rumor got back to him of a masked architect in the court of his rival and it could not have been difficult to put the two together. No, I decided the price for these buildings was a little too high for me to pay, and consigned myself to building mansions for the rich. Beautiful homes, to be sure, and I was paid quite well, but they were quite ordinary. No trap-doors, no hidden passageways.  
  
Once in a while I had the chance to visit the opera in Rome and yes, I bore the torment of Carlotta's screeching even there. Even with that, I was entranced. Men and women who in their own ways had situations as difficult as my own to bear found love on the boards, and their stories were set to music that they themselves sang! I admit, I was, as you would say, "hooked," even with having to hear Carlotta. Perhaps she influenced my choice to design an opera house, for while the Roman opera is quite good, the acoustics could have used much improvement and it was not an impressive building.  
  
[[ Here Erik pauses in his narrative and sighs. ]]  
  
And yet. I was not satisfied. I lived in an apartment in Venice and spent my time building homes for other people, yet I was a vagrant myself, a stranger in a strange land and homesick for France. The things I built were no longer firing my imagination. What about me? When could I build my own home?  
  
The answer came in 1854, when the call of a contest resounded through Europe. And such a contest! The French emperor Napoleon III wanted a new opera house and designs were being taken from all around the world. I smiled when I heard the news and sent in my own design. Not under my own name, of course. I thought a bit before choosing it, the name of a little- known Frenchman whom I had worked with a few times in Italy. Charles Garnier. Of course, the real man had died quietly two years before in his bed. I was not involved, if that if what you think.  
  
Imagine my surprise when my designs won! I packed immediately and went to Paris, found a little flat to stay at. I found a con artist willing to bark orders for a little bit of pay. I taught him a little of architecture, enough so that he would know what he was talking about, and sent him out in my place as Charles Garnier. Do not worry, I was always on the scene and never far from his elbow, though he never saw me and rarely knew when I was there. I drove him hard all the same and through him drove the construction men hard even through the war that delayed construction by ten years.  
  
I knew all about the water table under that site and modified my plans accordingly. We left a lake there, and the place has a meters-thick double casing of masonry to separate the lake in the cellars from the water table outside. I built my home within this casing, careful to fortify it against the action of water over time. For I had already determined that this would be my home. Understand, I had already built a palace for the Shah or Persia and another for the Sultan of Ottoman. Now was I to build mere opera house for the mere Emperor of France? Of course not, this was a palace that I was building for myself, disguised as an opera house, and my home would rival anything I had built for others in the East!  
  
Once in a while I was seen on the site, despite my efforts to the contrary, and I let it be put about that I was a master bricklayer contracted by "Garnier" to oversee the builders. Partially true. This was also when I first came to be called "the Ghost" because I vanished from view as soon as I realized someone had noticed me. I made certain rumors escaped of the labyrinthine nature of my palace purely as a taunt to both of my former imperial employers: do not think I did not watch carefully to see who was sent in response. Likewise, do not try to imagine my displeasure at seeing the Daroga of Mazanderan one fine morning on the site, you cannot.  
  
And so, little by little, my palace was constructed, a thumb in the nose to both the Shah and the Sultan, and then like the Ghost I was called I vanished.  
  
You know the rest, I think, or you would not have come here. But that, my dear, is precisely how I built a palace in the middle of Paris with none but myself and the con-man the wiser, and deceived the world into believing in the existence of a dead man. Very appropriate, would you not say?  
  
[[ You ask a question. ]]  
  
What happened to the con artist? Do not trouble yourself about him. I believe he took up an honest living as an architect from what I taught him and continued to use the name Garnier until he died.  
  
[[ The crystal clock on the mantelpiece chimes midnight. Erik sets down his glass and rises. ]]  
  
Ah, it is late. No doubt you wish to sleep: come, I keep a guest room. Once Christine's, you understand, this way. [[ He leads the way to a room with a boat-shaped bed. ]] A good night to you. I will wake you in the morning.  
  
[[ Erik vanishes, the lights extinguish themselves. You are left alone in a place that has been thoroughly gutted by time, by moisture and by people. The Louis-Philippe furnishings have collapsed from mold, the rags and fabrics have been chewed on by moths and rats alike. Spiderwebs blanket all. The only lights you can see are a pair of amber lamps glowing, moving simultaneously in the same direction. A form materializes at the misty doorway where splinters of the door hang on rusty hinges, the form of a slight young woman. Erik reappears at her side and takes her hand. They step outside, and the sound of the stone outer door shutting wakes you. ]]  
  
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Finis  
  
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Wow, a couple of things I didn't expect in there. Dear me, don't blame me for these crazy stories, I just sit down at the keyboard and let my hands run wild! I'm not exactly happy with it, myself, but please give me your feedback, I really do love it and I'm a starving student! Feed me, feed me! :-)  
  
Blessings, AngelCeleste85 


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